Challenges to Knowledge and Claims – CUET PG Philosophy – Notes

Challenges to the Traditional Account of Knowledge

For centuries, the dominant theory of knowledge in Western philosophy, dating back to Plato, was the Justified True Belief (JTB) account. This model proposes that knowledge is composed of three individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions. For a subject S to know a proposition P, the following three conditions must be met:

• (B) Belief: S must believe that P is true. This is the subjective condition; knowledge requires a personal acceptance or assent to a proposition.
• (T) Truth: The proposition P must actually be true. This is the objective, or metaphysical, condition. One cannot know something that is false. For example, you cannot know that the Earth is flat, even if you believe it and have reasons for it, because the proposition itself is false.
• (J) Justification: S must be justified in believing P. This is the epistemic condition, meaning the belief must be supported by good reasons, evidence, or a proper cognitive process. It is what distinguishes knowledge from a lucky guess.

According to the JTB account, if you have a belief that is both justified and true, you have knowledge. This elegant and intuitive analysis stood largely unchallenged for over two millennia. However, the 20th century brought forth profound challenges that questioned its sufficiency. The two most significant challenges are the Gettier problem, which argues that JTB is not sufficient for knowledge, and skepticism, which questions whether justification, and therefore knowledge, is possible at all.

The Gettier Problem: Is JTB Sufficient for Knowledge?

In 1963, a short, three-page paper by an American philosopher named Edmund Gettier, titled “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?”, revolutionized epistemology. Gettier argued that the JTB conditions, while necessary, are not sufficient for knowledge. He demonstrated this by constructing counterexamplesnow known as Gettier cases-in which a person holds a justified true belief, but we would intuitively deny that they have knowledge.

The core of a Gettier case is the presence of epistemic luck. The person’s belief turns out to be true by sheer coincidence, and the justification they hold is defective in some crucial way, even though it appears perfectly adequate to them.

Classic Gettier Cases Explained:

Gettier’s original paper presented two cases. Understanding their structure is key to grasping the problem.

Case I: Smith, Jones, and the Ten Coins:

• The Setup: Smith and Jones have applied for the same job. Smith has strong evidence for the following conjunctive proposition: (d) Jones is the man who will get the job, and Jones has ten coins in his pocket.
• Smith’s Justification for (d):
  1. The company president told him that Jones would be selected.
  2. Smith himself had counted the coins in Jones’s pocket a few minutes ago.
• The Inference: From proposition (d), Smith validly infers a new proposition: (e) The man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. Smith is clearly justified in believing (e), as it is a logical deduction from (d), for which he has strong evidence.
• The Twist: Unbeknownst to Smith, he, not Jones, is the one who will get the job. And, also by complete coincidence, Smith himself has ten coins in his pocket.

Analysis of Case I

Let’s check if Smith’s belief in proposition (e) meets the JTB conditions:

• Is it a Belief? Yes, Smith clearly believes (e).
• Is it True? Yes, proposition (e) is true. The man who will get the job (Smith) does indeed have ten coins in his pocket.
• Is it Justified? Yes, Smith has a perfectly valid justification. He inferred (e) from (d), and he had strong evidence for (d).

So, Smith has a justified true belief that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. However, does Smith know this? The overwhelming intuition is no. His belief is true because of a lucky coincidence. His justification is based on a false belief-that Jones would get the job. The evidence points to Jones, but the proposition’s truth is because of Smith. There is a disconnect between the justification and the truth-maker of the proposition.

Case II: Jones, the Ford, and Brown in Barcelona:

• The Setup: Smith has strong evidence that his friend Jones owns a Ford. For all Smith knows, Jones has always owned a Ford, and Smith has just seen Jones driving one.
• The Inference: Smith has another friend, Brown, and he has no idea where Brown is. Smith picks a city at random, say Barcelona, and forms the following disjunctive proposition: (g) Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Barcelona.
• Smith’s Justification for (g): This belief is justified for Smith because he has strong evidence for the first part of the disjunction (“Jones owns a Ford”), and if one part of an “Either P or Q” statement is true, the entire statement is true. This is a valid logical move called disjunction introduction.
• The Twist: Contrary to Smith’s strong evidence, Jones does not own a Ford (he is driving a rental car). But, by sheer, cosmic coincidence, Brown is in fact in Barcelona.

Analysis of Case II:

Let’s check Smith’s belief in proposition (g) against the JTB criteria:

• Is it a Belief? Yes, Smith believes (g).
• Is it True? Yes, proposition (g) is true because the second disjunct (“Brown is in Barcelona”) is true.
• Is it Justified? Yes, Smith is justified in believing (g) because he inferred it from a proposition for which he had very strong evidence.

Once again, Smith has a JTB. But he clearly does not have knowledge. He has no evidence whatsoever for Brown’s location. His belief is true due to luck, and the justification he holds is for a part of the belief that is actually false.

Logical Flow: Justified False Belief (e.g., “Jones owns a Ford”) → Valid Logical Inference (e.g., Disjunction Introduction) → Accidentally True Belief (e.g., “Either Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in Barcelona”) → JTB without Knowledge